April

On April 8, five students from the Materials Science and Engineering Department of Drexel University’s College of Engineering paid a visit to Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. They spent time in the Senate and House office buildings meeting with staffers of U.S. Senators and Representatives and advocating for increased federal funding of basic STEM research. This was part of the Congressional Visitations Day, which was sponsored by the Material Advantage in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Over 30 people from different Universities participated on these meetings, which were all held on April 8th.

Antonios Kontsos, a P.C. Chou Endowed Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, recently received the 2014 ONR Young Investigator Program award for his proposal titled, “Identification of Fatigue Precursors for Multi-scale NDE & Prognostics.” This highly prestigious award received by Kontsos is one of only 24 awardees nationwide.

Drexel’s Wei Sun, PhD, Albert Soffa chair professor in the College of Engineering, has devised a method for 3D printing tumors that could soon be taking cancer research out of the petri dish.

Using a mixture of cervical cancer cells and a hydrogel substance that resembles an ointment balm, Sun can print out a tumor model that can be used for studying their growth and response to treatment. This living model will give cancer researchers a better look at how tumors behave and a more accurate measure of how they respond to treatment.

Drexel University’s Concrete Canoe competition recently won 1st place overall at the 2014 ASCE Mid-Atlantic Regionals Competition held April 11-13 at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. As a result of this win, the team will be competing at the National Competition at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown on June 19-21.

Engineers Without Borders, a Drexel University student organization, has gone beyond the borders of engineering and the United States to accomplish a humanitarian project.

This coming June, six students from Drexel’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) will venture to a village called Miramar in El Salvador to implement a collection system that supplies clean water for 160 people in the community. The Miramar project has been the dominant work of EWB for the past five years. Since 2007, the team has taken three assessment trips to examine the site before implementing the water system.

Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Doctoral student Kerry Hamilton has recently been offered a 2014-15 Fulbright-CSIRO Postgraduate Scholarship. Kerry will be conducting a 10-month research project at Australia’s leading science research organization, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). She will be working with the “Water for a Healthy Country” multidisciplinary National Research Flagship in the laboratory of Dr. Simon Toze and Dr. Warish Ahmed to measure concentrations of waterborne pathogens in roof-harvested rainwater tanks and model their association with meteorological factors. She will also compare two different laboratory methods and conduct a risk assessment to inform Australian public health policies. Outside of the lab, she will be pursuing integrated water resources management coursework at the University of Queensland, volunteering through the CSIRO “Scientists in Schools” Program, and expanding the Brisbane chapter of CSIRO Women in Science.

Senior Design team from the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering (CAEE) Department recently represented Drexel University at the 2014 ASCE Charles Pankow Foundation Annual Architectural Engineering Student Competition, held in conjunction with the Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI) National Conference hosted by Drexel University on March 27th through the 29th. The Drexel team was represented by CAEE students: Nathan Barry, Jeanine Lancellotti, Natasha Martines, Jalpesh Patel, and Michael Sawin, ECE Student James Myers, and Westphal COMAD student Katrina Connors. Each team had 45 minutes to present their project of the Integrated, Structural, Mechanical, and Electrical Design of a 30-story High Rise Office Building located at 350 Mission Street in San Francisco, CA. This year’s team won the competition’s Most Innovative Project Award for a second consecutive year and was also the runner-up in Structural Design.

On Tuesday, April 8, Former Colorado Governor and Director of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University Bill Ritter sat down with the College of Engineering Dean, Joseph Hughes, for a Q&A about America’s transition to a clean-energy economy. The conversation, the first in a series organized by the A.J. Drexel Institute for Energy and the Environment (IExE focused on solutions that will create clean, sustainable energy in America and globally.

Five students from the Electrical and Computer Engineering; Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering; and Materials Science Engineering departments have been awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) of 2014.

The company, Air Products, recently gifted $50,000 to Drexel University’s College of Engineering, to be distributed to various programs and departments. The Summer Diversity Program will receive $30,000; Freshmen Design Projects, $5,000; the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department, $6,000; and the Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics Department, $6,000.